Happy birthday, Poor Richard

On this day in history, December 19, 1732, Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack was born – and the first issue published. Franklin included all the information that almanacs normally provide – sun rise, sun set, eclipses, weather predictions, yadda yadda. But it was also one of those small things (or – not so small – but let’s just say that Richard’s Almanack couldn’t have done it on its own) that made the colonies feel more like a community. The colonies did things for themselves. They were under the crown, but that feeling of being separate from the crown started very early – and the almanac – with its listing of court dates, and town meetings, and church meetings, etc. – was part of that. It helped foster that. It helped spread information.

Benjamin Franklin wrote in his autobiography:

In 1732 I first published my almanac, under the name of Richard Saunders; it was continued by me about twenty-five years and commonly called “Poor Richard’s Almanac”. I endeavored to make it both entertaining and useful, and it accordingly came to be in such demand that I reaped considerable profit from it, vending annually near ten thousand. And observing that it was generally read, scarce any neighborhood in the province being without it, I considered it as a proper vehicle for conveying instruction among the common people, who bought scarcely any other books. I therefore filled all the little spaces that occurred between the remarkable days in the calendar with proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality as the means of procuring wealth, and thereby securing virtue; it being more difficult for a man in want to act always honestly, as, to use here one of those proverbs, it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.

These proverbs, which contained the wisdom of many ages and nations, I assembled and formed into a connected discourse prefixed to the almanac of 1757 as the harangue of a wise old man to the people attending an auction. The bringing all these scattered counsels thus into a focus enabled them to make greater impression. The piece, being universally approved, was copied in all the newspapers of the American continent, reprinted in Britain on a large sheet of paper to be stuck up in houses; two translations were made of it in France, and great numbers bought by the clergy and gentry to distribute gratis among their poor parishioners and tenants. In Pennsylvania, as it discouraged useless expense in foreign superfluities, some thought it had its share of influence in producing that growing plenty of money which was observable for several years after its publication.

I remember my grandmother, Mummy Gina, had a huge illustrated Richard’s Almanack at her house that we loved to page through as kids . I can still see some of the illustrations in my mind. I remember very well the illustration for the proverb about visitors being like fish (they start to stink after a couple of days).

I love this website. Ha!!! Especially in light of the whole key on the kite thing.

Some of the proverbs from the almanac (he freely admitted that he did not invent many of these – they were passed down, or he would put his own humorous spin on them):

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

After three days men grow weary, of a wench, a guest, and weather rainy.

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

Plough deep while sluggards sleep and you shall have corn to sell and to keep.

Have you something to do tomorrow? Do it today

There are no gains without pains.

The noblest question in the world is: What good may I do in it?

H.W. Brands writes, in his biography of Benjamin Franklin (The First American):

Gazette readers intrigued enough to buy the bound version (priced at three shillings sixpence per dozen, obviously intended for resale) or the broadsheet edition (two shillings sixpence the dozen) were introduced to Richard Sauncers, Philomath – a standard honorific for almanac-makers – by Saunders himself. “Courteous Reader, I might in this place attempt to gain thy favour by declaring that I write almanacks with no other view than the public good; but in this I should not be sincere, and men are nowadays too wise to be deceived in pretenses how specious soever.” Like the printer Franklin apologizing for the advertisement that gave offense to certain customers, Saunders confessed to monetary motives. “The plain truth of the matter is, I am excessive poor, and my wife, good woman, is, I tell her, excessive proud. She cannot bear, she says, to sit spinning in her shift of tow while I do nothing but gaze at the stars, and has threatened to burn all my books and rattling-traps (as she calls my instruments) if I do not make some profitable use of them for the good of my family. The printer has offered me some considerable share of the profits, and I have thus begun to comply with my Dame’s desire.”

Hahahahahahaha

More from The First American:

As was apparent to the least attentive reader, Franklin thoroughly enjoyed adopting the guise of Richard Saunders. Where Franklin the businessman had to be circumspect careful not to offend, Saunders the almanacker could be outrageous – indeed, the more outrageous the better. Franklin as Franklin often had to hide his gifts to avoid inspiring envy; Franklin as Saunders could flaunt his wit, erudition, and general brilliance. In time – as his position in the community grew more secure – Franklin would no longer require Richard Saunders; till then the alter ego helped keep him sane.

Readers enjoyed Poor Richard as much as Franklin did. Copies were out the door by the single and the gross. In one year John Peter Zenger of New York (lately the defendant in a celebrated libel trial) took eighteen dozen in a batch, then another sixteen dozen. Louis Timothee (who now generally went by Lewis Timothy) in South Carolina ordered twenty-five dozen; Thomas Fleet in Boston also took twenty-five dozen. James Franklin’s widow, Ann, in Newport bought one thousand. These numbers hardly made Poor Richard the bestselling almanac in America; where Poor Richard sold an average of about ten thousand per year, Nathaniel Ames’s Astronomical Diary sold five to six times as many. But Poor Richard had a unique persona, and it developed a loyal readership.

While readers may have come for the quarrels Franklin provoked, they stayed for the advice he dispensed – and the way he dispensed it. Every almanac offered pearls of wisdom on personal conduct and related matters of daily life; that the pearls had been retrieved from other oysters bothered no one except perhaps the owners of those other oysters, who in any event had no recourse in the absencew of applicable copyright law. The trick for writers like Franklin was to polish the pearls and set them distinctively; in this he had no peer. What came to be called “the sayings of Poor Richard” first surfaced as filler on the calendar pages of the almanac the limitations of space, together with Franklin’s inherent economy, taught him to distill each message to its morsel. “Great talkers, little doers” broke no philosophical ground, but for pith it trumped nearly every alternative. “Hunger never saw bad bread”; “Light purse, heavy heart”; “Industry need not wish”; and “Gifts burst rocks” fell into the same category.

Sometimes succinctness yielded – slightly – to sauciness. “Neither a fortress nor a maidenhead will hold out long after they begin to parley.” “Marry your son when you will but your daughter when you can.” “Tell a miser he’s rich, and a woman she’s old, you’ll get no money of one nor kindness of t’other.” “Prythee isn’t Miss Cloe’s a comical case?/She lends out her tail, and she borrows her face.” “The greatest monarch on the proudest throne is obliged to sit upon his own arse.” “Force shits upon reason’s back.”

Poor Richard’s Almanack is still in print today. Extraordinary.